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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KonKilo who wrote (348154)	1/27/2003 12:45:48 AM
From: Steve Dietrich	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

<<We had slavery for decades without war.>> There was violence and near war virtually every time a new state entered the union and threatened to tip the balance of power between the free and slave states. <<The hostilities commenced when the South seceded. Hence, secession caused the war, not slavery.>> The South seceded because the abolitionist Republicans won the election. The record here is very clear. <<Do you think war would have resulted had the South kept slavery but not seceded?>> As i've said: every time a new state entered the union and the free vs. slave issue came up, the nation nearly careened into war. As long as we were expanding and slavery was not, we were on the verge of war. Steve

To: KonKilo who wrote (348154)	1/27/2003 5:51:16 AM
From: Johannes Pilch	Respond to of 769670

We had slavery for decades without war. This is certainly no argument. The reason we had slavery for decades without war was only because we had slavery for decades without any vigorous threat to slavery. That threat came in 1860, with the election of Abe Lincoln. This is why with the mere legitimate election of the man, the South tried to break Union. The hostilities commenced when the South seceded. Hence, secession caused the war, not slavery. Secession did not spring from thin air and Lincoln did not fire a single shot at the South in response to southern secession. The Union's military response came only after the South fired upon a federal installation called Ft. Sumter. And this happened because of a desire by the South to, amongst other things, protect slavery. The reasoning from here is very easily completed: 1. Secession happened to protect slavery. 2. The South took a federal military installation by use of force in order to further secession to protect slavery. 3. The Union responded militarily to the South's effort to achieve secession for slavery. 4. The South fought against the Union, attempting to achieve secession to protect slavery. All these actions are rooted in slavery. They all, even secession itself, rested upon the fundamental issue of slavery. Therefore the war was essentially started over the issue of slavery. Do you think war would have resulted had the South kept slavery but not seceded? If so, what would have been the trigger? Well we must first get the history here correct. Secession itself was inextricably and fundamentally tied to slavery. Slavery caused the secession that caused the South to fire upon the Union's fort. It was this military hostility, fueled by the South's ultimate desire to protect state's rights, chief amongst which was the right to slavery, that sparked the war. So if we must pick nits here, secession did not spark the war. The South's attack upon Sumter did, and that attack came as a result of secession, and that secession came as a result of slavery. So essentially slavery (the desire to protect it) started the war.